This is my personal blog. I am a UNISON Branch Secretary and also a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk).
UNISON is not responsible for the contents of this blog. (Nor is my employer!)
I am a socialist and a Labour Party member. I am a member of the Labour Representation Committee (www.l-r-c.org.uk).
I blog to report on what I get up to as a labour movement activist and to share my views.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Vote Labour

The Labour
Party, of which I have been a member for thirty five years, is a miserable
shadow of what it once was and less than a shadow of what it might (and ought
to) be.

In 1945, led
by a leader who would never have risen in these times of shallow celebrity,
Labour (pushed by a population determined not to go back to the 1930s) created
a welfare state at a time when the economy was in every way in a far worse
state than it ever has been since.

During the longest
continuous period of Labour government we have ever had (and perhaps ever will
have), Labour refused to legislate to remove from the trade unions (who created
and have always sustained the Party) legal shackles more onerous than those
imposed in any other advanced capitalist country.

Last year,
under a (less worse) leader elected with union support, the Party began to move
to fracture fundamentally the relationship between the Party and the unions. At
the same time, whenever a handful of brave socialists dare to question the
complicity of Labour local authorities with Tory austerity they are rewarded
with disciplinary sanctions.

And yet
today I voted Labour without question. So should all trade unionists who want
to engage with the real (and horrendous) politics of our country in 2014.

We face a
Government which (whilst it may all to often be “marching over bridges New Labour
built”) has done social damage of which Thatcher and Major could only have
dreamed.

As it has
devastated the remnants of the post-war settlement, so the political support
for social democracy which rested upon those remnants has withered. Today, in the
European elections, the Coalition parties will gain fewer votes than a
Poujadiste protest party which stands clearly to their right.

The
Sainsbury-funded (and misnamed) “Progress” faction and the weird “Blue Labour”
types will conclude that Labour should chase right-wing voters with coded
racism and authoritarian social policies.

1 comment:

And yet I did not vote I could not be bothered what the hell do I have to vote for.

Thacher is now looking like an angel to the disabled and the sick, today we have Rachel Reeves proudly saying if labour gets in they would be harder on welfare then the Tories.

Boy I nearly voted UKIP but having a Forth Tory party was to much for me.Miliband has to be the weakest lead I've ever seen in my life his attacks on the Unions which was in response to Progress who did not like anyone interfering in their choice of Candidates.

Sorry but Tory Lite is not good enough labour is now a middle class, middle right Progress party getting rid of the name New labour is one thing changing the ethos is another.

I cannot vote Miliband I just cannot I think it would be the end, it would without doubt be heading for a name change to the Progress Lite party.